Day 19: Gillingham to Dover – 84km

Not long in distance today, but quite a lot of climbing. Some great views, very pretty countryside. We went through a number of narrow tree lined streets from small village to village.

Suburban street coming out of Gillingham

 

Lenham historic village

After one steep downhill we came across of field of poppies that was very pretty. Once again a number of quaint pubs with some interesting names. One pub was called “The Bad Habit”.

“The Dirty Habit” (the pub Kaye referred to as “The Bad Habit” #fakenews)

We stopped in a small village and the pub had a list of what was the special feature of each night, one night they featured boozy milkshakes – bet that could be dangerous. We stopped and watch a pig with her piglets for awhile, she had about 10 and they were all trying to latch on and stay latched on while she was moving.Lunch was at the top of long climb and had a great view of the English Channel and Felixstowe, the town where the trains go under the English Channel. You can’t go through the Channel by car, your car gets loaded onto a train. The Euro tunnel is the longest undersea tunnel in the world with 38 km of it under the sea. We are not going in the tunnel however, we are catching the ferry from Dover.

View from the lunch spot (Photo credit: Michele’s Facebook page)

 

 

After lunch I thought we had finished climbing for the day but coming down one hill I could see a road going to the right and a nasty looking up hill. I was hoping to turn left but the flagging was to go right! Climbing once more! Great views from the top but very narrow and a number of cars that we had to keep getting off the road for.

In the next town there was a “Battle of Britain – 10 July 1940 to 31 October 1940” memorial to the World War Two Airforce crew. From here you got a good view of the  white cliffs of Dover. It was interesting reading the information as I hadn’t appreciated until then the significance of what had been achieved by a relatively few against the Germans.

White cliffs of Dover (Photo credit: Michele’s Facebook page)

When we were leaving the memorial on the gate was a sign that said “No fly tipping”, we had seen this in a number of places including by rivers and I thought this was a type of fishing, but it turns out it means no driving past and throwing rubbish from your car.Then it was downhill all the way to Dover. We are staying at Best Western Dover Marina Hotel, which is right on the harbour front and we have a room facing the sea.

 

Room view from Dover Marina Hotel

 

Dover waterfront

Once we had showered and changed we went to the “Michael Coo featured pub of the day” – The White Horse. This is where the channel swimmers came afterward and write their name and time on the walls. There was a 70 year old, plus a relay team of 12 year old’s. So far there have been successful double crossings but not triple. One of Michele and Tony’s friends Anne has done the crossing and they were able to see her name and time up in the pub.

Records of channel swimmers line the walls and ceilings inside the pub.

Michele pointing to their friend’s name (Photo credit: Michele’s Facebook page)

Dinner tonight with Michele and Tony, and Judy and Tim (from Wellington NZ). Dinner was meant to be prawns but they must have run out as they asked us to have chicken liver pate instead. I agreed as I had forgotten how dreadful English chicken liver pate is – it’s like paste with no taste. The cod for the main was tiny, thankfully there was dessert which was sticky toffee pudding. There was nothing sticky about it but was quite nice when covered with cream.

We have an early start tomorrow, we have to leave the hotel by 6:30 am as we are catching the ferry to France – we land at Dunkirk.